Sports car brand promises hybrid line-up and fully electric machine

McLaren confirms 18 new models by 2025

Sports car brand promises hybrid line-up and fully electric machine

McLaren confirms 18 new models by 2025

13 Jul 2018Jonathan Hawley

McLaren’s sports car division has announced that by 2025 almost its entire range will be powered by hybrid drivetrains in a substantial investment that will also see the introduction of 18 new and revised models within that timeframe.

The company’s Track25 business plan that replaces the previous Track22 version which indicated its direction until 2022 was revealed yesterday at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in England.

McLaren Automotive plans to spend A$2.13 billion on measures that include ensuring every model in its “mainstream” Sports and Super line-up have hybrid petrol/electric propulsion by that date.

However it reserved the right for future Ultimate cars – replacements for the ultra-fast Senna (below) and upcoming BP23 – to be either electrified or petrol-powered, depending on what was needed for the best hypercar performance.

That car will be a successor to the P1 model of 2013 which itself used a performance-oriented hybrid drivetrain, although it seems there is no guarantee that tradition will continue.

Among the 18 new or upgraded models due to be released by 2025 is the high-speed tourer currently code-named BP23 that will be shown towards the end of this year and is expected to feature more streamlined and elegant styling than some of McLaren’s wilder creations as well as a three-seater cabin layout.

McLaren is also planning a fully electric sports car which it says will have to incorporate a fast charging system for its battery system along with a 300km range.

It’s all part of a plan to increase sales from around 3500 cars globally in 2017 to over 6000 cars by 2025. This, from an independently-owned company that was founded in 2011 to take on the likes of Ferrari, Porsche and Lamborghini and became profitable after only two years.

That 6000 vehicle target is about the limit of what can be produced at the company’s plant in Woking, or the new facility for producing the cars’ carbon-fibre tubs in Sheffield which is due to go online towards the end of 2019.

One thing the Track25 plan does not include is any mention of an SUV along the lines of a Porsche Cayenne, Lamborghini Urus or Ferrari’s upcoming mystery car, according to McLaren’s sales and marketing executive director Jolyon Nash.